Curriculum and Modules

Aims and goals

The aim of this project output is to provide examples of modules for introducing teachers to anthropological approaches and methods in the study of educational lifeworlds and practices. Our primary goal is to motivate teachers to explore their professional lives, endeavours and practice in new ways.
Working comparatively with ethnographic cases from different cultural contexts students will explore ways of thinking which make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. These ethnography-based didactic approaches are useful tools for understanding educational practices and their embeddedness in particular and changing cultural, socio-economic and political configurations. (Future) teachers can use these tools for reflecting on the significance, potential, challenges, and constraints of their profession.

Target group

In developing these modular seminars or workshops, we had in mind two main target groups. The first is teacher educators, ideally with a background in anthropology (cultural studies, sociology, ethnology, cultural geography). The second target group is pre- and in-service teachers taking the modules.
We see this resource as potentially useful for social workers, pre-school teachers, special pedagogues, nurses and other professionals working in other pedagogical settings etc.

Topics

We have chosen a set of topics along two criteria: one, to provide insight into core anthropological questions of importance for education; two, to highlight current issues of special concern for education in a globalizing world.
An example of the first, the topic of worldmaking focuses on how people imagine the world in which they live and how they fashion this world in the course of everyday life. An example of the second, intersectionality, addresses ongoing processes of categorization, discrimination and inequality in educational settings, as well as in society-at-large. Another example is mobility, which addresses current educational challenges related to geographical and social mobility.

Ethnographic approach

Ethnographic fieldwork is the primary methodology employed by anthropologists, even though many other disciplines also employ this method. Ethnography involves collecting data about a particular community of people by immersion in the daily life of that community for an extended period of time.
According to Vereed Amit, this notion of immersion assumes the existence of the field approached by the researchers as a standalone array of relationships and activities. Nevertheless, the ethnographic field does not remain latent until its discovery in a world massively interconnected. On the contrary, the field has to be constructed isolating it from other potential forms of contextualisation of its constituents.
The ethnographer's field of study is not simply there; it has to be constructed, which entails strategic decisions concerning its limits. The researcher has to decide which places, phenomena and contacts are given attention, and which ones to ignore. The implicit assumptions of the researcher concerning the relevance and authenticity of the given phenomena also - often subconsciously – shape and hereby do their part in constructing the field.

Use

The material presented here was developed as a set of modular seminars or workshops, which may be combined or reassembled as teachers finds most useful according to their teaching aims and goals. Whereas the modules are translated, the full 6 ECTS curriculum is in English and may be translated as necessary. Both may be adapted for use in particular national and regional educational contexts.
One way of assembling these into a curriculum of 6 ECTS is to combine the following three modules of 2 ECTS each:

• Power structures within and outside of educational systems
• World making of diversified societies
• Sociality and relationality as educational factors

Links to other resources

The modules build on and incorporate other project outputs (concepts, animations), which teachers may find useful.